First, the caption contest will be decided by tomorrow morning--perhaps we'll pick the winner at Birds and Beers tonight?

Second--I love my readers. I love that you teach me something new all the time. How on earth would I have learned about a website dedicated to Feral Children? Why is that not a show on The Learning Channel?

Third, I totally thought I had a perfect blog entry the other day about a pair of cardinals that were doing a mating display in my apartment and checking out an empty onion bag on my couch as a potential nest site. I even got incredibly excited when Cinnamon hopped up next to the onion bag and the male cardinal tried to puff up and drive her off, but she tried to nibble his tail...then I woke up to blog it and then realized that wow, that was some powerful cold medicine.

Fourth and speaking of fever dreams, I DID NOT TAKE THE FOLLOWING PHOTOS, but they are making the rounds in the email inboxes, so if you haven't seen them check out this great gray owl (I think that was seen Montana, I have no idea if it is recent):

If you you know who took these photo, let me know--I'd love to give them their props. It's a partially albino great gray owl...although, I don't think we're supposed to call them partially albinos anymore, according to Birding I think we are supposed to call this partial amelanism (because you know, ornithologists like to make things simple for the general public).

Shnifty bird.

UPDATE: WE KNOW WHO TOOK THE PHOTOS! Thanks to knowledgeable blog readers we now know that the photos were taken by Cheryl Farmer in Montana and you can read more about this bird at the Prairie Ice Blog (which looks like a cool photography blog). Thanks, John!